Warrantless Wiretapping: Obama Uses It, Too!
I’d like to dedicate this post to all of the liberals who have ever told me how horrible George W. Bush was for using warrantless wiretapping to record conversations, not for political gain per se, but to secure the safety of this nation.
Recently, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) had been engaged in a court battle (Jewel v. NSA) to stop the use of wiretapping without a warrant against U.S. citizens. This kind of battle for the EFF is nothing new. In fact, during the Bush presidency, it was authorized by the much hated Patriot Act, passed after 9/11 in order to help protect and secure this county.
Well, the DoJ has made a motion to dismiss the case, stating that further pursuit of the case would “cause exceptionally grave harm to national security.” This is pretty much the same argument that Bush used.
If you will remember, when Senator Obama was campaigning for President, he complained about how the Bush Administration “invoked a legal tool known as the ’state secrets’ privilege more than any other previous administration to get cases thrown out of civil court.” This is EXACTLY what has been done under the Obama administration.
And yeah, maybe the Patriot Act was a bit far reaching.
But let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we? How about a show of hands…who here can tell me about Project Echelon?
See, this is my big dopey grin face. :D
Echelon was the program that was used to eavesdrop on WAY MORE phone calls that Bush tuned in on. Hmm…which president did that? How about good ol’ Bill Clinton! And you know what? I didn’t hear liberal media complain about that…even though it was a massive project. By massive I mean absolutely Orwellian. Oh, and that was before Bush was President. Funny.
You know, there was a group of liberals that were angry about Echelon…the hacker community. How do I know this? Because first, I was a bit more liberal back in those days (thanks to my lack of care about the world around me) and second, I was actually part of the hacker community.
That’s right. This right-wing goon was once a digital menace…at least according to the media. I can go on about Echelon, but I won’t right now. I’ll just recommend digging through Cryptome.org and back issues of 2600 magazine. While you are at it, you might look up Carnivore as well.
Happy hunting. And please, for the love of Pete, if you’re gonna say that one is bad for one crime, then don’t praise the other criminals who commit the same one.
Update: I did some leg work for you all. Enjoy.
Carnivore FOIA Documents
Carnivore - Wikipedia
How did Carnivore work?
Echelon - FAS.org
Echelon - Wikipedia
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Tags: bush, Carnivore, Clinton, DoJ, Echelon, obama, patriot act, warrantless wiretapping
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